Kindle Notes & Highlights
When you were a child, you may have had occasion to look through a prism. You were no doubt fascinated by the refracted, distorted reality. After you averted your gaze, everything returned to normal. You were fortunate.
My sister, Ellyn, and I were pushed away if we tried to sit on the couch in between our parents, mostly because they seemed to live in fear of an overturned table. At some point, Ellyn, whose place to sit was in the big chair across from the couch, set up her own TV table. Her table was filled with toys and snacks. Now, she too had a table blocking my access to her.
My parents never actually divorced. They remained in a weird limbo of snarky comments and backstabbing jabs for the remainder of their lives.
Apparently, his brief stint in the service did nothing to bolster his self-esteem but did greatly improve his ability to be drunk pretty much 24/7.
When I was in third grade, Mom worked hours of overtime to pay for the holiday. Every gift tag on every gift under the tree was signed “From the Overtime Phantom.” I learned two things that Christmas: Santa isn’t real and what guilt felt like. She spent the day drinking and ruminating on all that she could have done with her overtime pay if she didn’t have to spend it on us. Merry Fucking Christmas.
we were living with a stranger who made my mother’s drinking look like a tea party.
If hell has a library, I hope my father reads this chapter. Hey, Dad, what’s the going rate to fuck a child?
I was quite sure this was a bad idea. But when any self-respecting adolescent makes a bad choice there is only one thing to do . . . get into a car with a strange boy who also dropped acid. What could possibly go wrong?
Whenever I tried to talk about anything that had happened to me in Florida, my father’s family would abruptly change the subject, reminding me how fortunate I was to have a father who was working so diligently on his own sobriety. I learned from the actions of the adults around me. They taught me that what I had to share was not important, and I should be grateful for what I had, even if what I had was sex trafficking, abuse, and neglect.
I followed Audrey around, serving meals and taking care of the man who sold my body into childhood prostitution. I find it difficult to find the words to describe the level of resentment that accompanied watching everyone, including myself, working hard to protect this man/child from the scary world.
People thought we were close. I guess in a way we were, but not because he was my champion and protector; it was more like we were soldiers who had been through a war together.
When one returns from war, you don’t discuss the details of what you’ve experienced. Who would believe or understand the extreme things you saw and had to do to survive? You just try to survive and move on.
We bought the dress and went home to show my father.
Can we just take a moment to consider what it might feel like for a teenage girl going to her first dance to be told by her father that the dress she took several hours to choose made her look like a French whore?
“Look how you have ruined dinner and upset your father. If he goes back to drinking, it will be your fault.”
I never even applied to college after my father said, “Girls like you don’t go to college.” For some reason, I believed him, assuming my only option was to continue the family legacy: blue-collar job, marriage, kids, alcoholism, death. In my senior year, I got a job as a waitress in the diner where Joan worked.
Once Anastasia’s guests decided they too could best get my attention by snapping their fingers, I may or may not have dropped some of the food on the floor in the kitchen before serving my finger-snapping customers. Oops, how clumsy of me.
I soon learned FBI agents take sarcastic comments about banks being robbed very seriously, especially if said bank is currently being robbed. My “funny” comment earned me a private meeting with the FBI agents for over an hour of questioning about my alleged “inside” knowledge of the robbery. After being cleared by the FBI agents as a bank teller trainee with a poorly timed sense of humor, I went on to become perhaps the worst bank teller in the history of banking.
She looked dejected, like she was sad that I didn’t need anything from her. Not that she would have given it—she just wanted something to not give me.
she complained about the distance, the restaurant, and going to the beach, as she did not like the feeling of sand in between her toes at all. And she was quite vocal about it, no matter how many times I reassured her that she could enter the restaurant from the parking lot, thus never touching the sand. She could also wear a pair of fucking boots and shut the hell up, since I was doing her the favor of coming to meet this guy anyway.
One thing I did know was that wherever her ashes ended up, I needed them to be transient. I didn’t want to have her in a stationary place. I needed to know that she was gone.
In full disclosure, I am not sure that I ended up with what I asked for and I don’t care.
Apparently, blinkers were optional, traffic lights were scarce, and I do not recall seeing any stop signs.
I didn’t pay all this money to pick peas and be pimped out at night.”
